A Beautiful Mind (2001)

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A Beautiful Mind Movie Review

A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 biopic directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly. It is a solid, but basic Oscar winner.

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“There has to be a mathematical explanation for how bad that tie is“

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It follows John Nash, a mathematician who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. This is the kind of story that is so typical and so clichéd that it never really fascinated me. I’m not saying that the film is boring because it isn’t as it is pretty engaging to watch, but it is so by the numbers that it really bothered me.

I really liked the first half of the movie, much more than the second half. The romance is particularly good and easily the highlight of the whole movie with the stars scene being so charming and I really liked some of the scenes in the third act with the sequence in which he has to say goodbye to his hallucinatory friends being the most poignant. However, that ending still felt too prolonged and it seemed that the movie had too many endings which was weird and definitely felt dragged. And the entire illness aspect of the storyline, though essential, is flawed because it doesn’t come until too late in the movie.

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Nash himself is pretty good as the main character. He annoyed me at times, but he was also really charming in some scenes. Alicia is also really good and their relationship is exceptionally strong. As for the other characters, they are all pretty well realized, but still not as memorable.

The acting in A Beautiful Mind is of course quite strong with Russell Crowe giving such a good performance. He wasn’t always great as he was weak in some scenes, but he was mostly pretty good in a difficult role. However, Jennifer Connelly gave the best performance here in my opinion as she is great and she stole the show whenever she was on screen.

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A Beautiful Mind is very clumsy in terms of storytelling, particularly its structure, but its twist with the illness is still dealt with really well as I did not see it coming. It is a flawed movie in terms of pacing as it isn’t particularly well edited, but it does have a good direction from Ron Howard and excellent performances.

The cinematography is very good and I liked some of the shots here quite a bit. I also really liked those math sequences as they were really well executed with a great score. Yes, the film is really well scored and quite moving at times. But I have to say that the film went into overly maudlin territory to me in its third act. Some scenes are very emotional, but others are too emotional to be honest. And the film is definitely too long as the entire third act should have been trimmed a lot. It works as a romance best, but not so much as a biopic. The tone is all over the place, but the dialogue is solid.

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A Beautiful Mind is an overrated movie as it received four Oscars with only Jennifer Connelly’s win being deserved, but even that isn’t justified as she should have competed in the lead category. The nomination for Crowe and score are much deserved, but the nod for editing is ridiculous as the film is very clumsily edited.